Many businesses use groups of service representatives or service agents to answer client telephone calls and communicate information. To most efficiently use the time and skills of each service representative, the service representatives may be organized into groups based on a skill set. For example, the groupings may be based on the representatives ability to handle client issues such as the opening of new accounts, billing issues and customer service issues on existing accounts.
Companies may use automatic call directors (ACDs) to handle calls. ACDs are manufactured by Lucent, Siemens and Nortel. For an example of an ACD with queues see U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,269.
Typically, if a service agent can not service a client telephone call, the client is put on hold while the call is transferred to a queue for the appropriate service agent, in another skill group, capable of handling the call. Requiring a service agent to transfer every call to the appropriate service agent is not cost efficient. Transferring calls is not cost efficient for a business such as a contact center because contact centers are charged fees for transferring calls.
Another disadvantage of existing communications systems, such as contact centers, is customer exacerbation due to waiting on hold. In an effort to reduce customer exacerbation caused by having to maintain a connection while on-hold in queue, secondary queue systems have been developed. A typical secondary queue system obtains a telephone number at which the calling client can be reached when a service representative is available (i.e., a call back number). The client disconnects, and then, at the proper time, a call back system establishes a connection to the client utilizing the call back number and couples the client to an available representative without waiting on-hold in queue. One exemplary system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,563,921 to Williams et al. which is commonly assigned with the present application.
While such a system may make the experience of waiting for a connection to a service representative slightly less exacerbating, it does not address the inconvenience of having to navigate an irritatingly slow and usually complicated voice prompt menu to enter the queue.
Accordingly, a method and system for handling calls to a resource in a more efficient and convenient manner is needed.
Also, improvements are needed in directing and managing the queuing of communications. Improvements are needed in interfaces for displaying queuing information and making queue selections.